Modded Wall-E becomes a real robot

[DJ Sures] got his hands on a plastic Wall-E toy and decided to build a robot that includes a camera, voice recognition, and object tracking. The result is adorable so we’re putting this video before the break:

Wall-E is built around an EZ-B Bluetooth Robot controller. All the software functions are handled with the complementary EZ-builder software. All this isn’t revolutionary – our Lego Mindstorms RCX from 1998 could handle object tracking with the Lego camera. Wall-E has 5 servos inside of him as well as an eBay 2.4 GHz wireless camera.

[DJ Sures] has had a lot of experience modifying toy robots. The Dalek build and a toy robot version of The Doctor’s faithful companion K9 are our favorite builds. This also isn’t his first Wall-E build; [DJ Sures] built one last year, but this is the first Wall-E with this much functionality. Right now, we’re thinking Wall-E needs a girlfriend. Maybe something along the lines of a hovering sphere bot?

I wonder how much of the robot logic and abilities reside on hardware inside of the robot?.
Sure you can take a remote control toy, add a webcam, interface some servos and attach to a computer. But, where’s the robot?.

The end result is nice, but this is really nothing more than a stealth commercial for the EZ-B he is selling. You just plug some sensors and servos into the board, and the software does all the actual work.

It is an interesting product for educational use, and for people without much electronics/programming experience, for sure. But buying a commercial kit and putting it together doesn’t seem like it is HaD worthy, especially when the submitter is the guy who is making the kit in the first place.

Thank you everyone :) The entire EZ-Robot project was inspired by hack-a-day features of my builds. It’s a passion of mine to help put robots in our homes. I enjoy doing the ground-work to leverage your future robots. The EZ-Robot project wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for past Hack-a-day features.